1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus which reproduces moving image files using index information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of the moving image files which are recorded and reproduced by a recording/reproducing apparatus such as a personal computer and a video recorder/video player have index information indicating the structures of their contents (See, for example, Patent Reference 1). Index information indicates, as for a chunk, a packet, a frame or the like in a moving image file, the relations between its position information and time information, its position information and marker information indicating its arbitrary reproduction point, and the like.
The reproducing apparatus uses such index information in order to determine the point in data at which data transfer to a decoder starts, when it starts reproduction in the middle of a file specified with time or position or when it makes intermittent reproduction of the file such as fast-forward and fast-backward reproduction. Without using index information, the reproducing apparatus may expose its functional limitations such that it spends much time to find a target point in data or it is unable to find the target point, under some specifications or restrictions of the decoder and the system. Therefore, good use of index information is of importance in reproducing moving image files.
Patent Reference 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 07-30838 Publication
Patent Reference JP 2003-289495 A discloses a method directed to solving the problem that an entry exceeding a capacity of a storage permissible entry field cannot be stored when writing, onto a memory, index information for a moving image file to be recorded.